In recent years, a system for providing various services by operating, in association with each other, a server and personal computer connected to a network such as the Internet, domestic home appliances and the like has been proposed.
Herein, it is necessary to customize (i.e. determination of details of the associated operation and definition thereof) the associated operation of the home appliances and server that are connected to the network. This requires a user efforts for grasping about all details of the associated operation and efforts for specifying the operation so that it becomes a large work loads for the user. On the other hand, a method for a user to select an associated operation from all pre-prepared associated operations is suggested. However, this method is not realistic since the number of combinations is enormous. Therefore, a method of automatically generating an association path in the associated operation according to an instruction of a user is proposed (e.g. refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent publication No. 2002-149405).
However, in the conventional method, the system automatically generates the association path so that a range of generable associated operations is limited to a self generation capability of the system (i.e. a range of pre-prepared associated operations in the system). As the result, there is a case where it cannot satisfy user's needs.
Accordingly, concerning the conventional problem, the present invention aims to provide a service association system and the like which can provide associated operations in response to the user's needs.